Feast of All Saints (45 page)

“So you didn’t love her!” Marcel blurted out. “And if you had, she would have wounded you!”

“You think so?” Christophe’s eyes fixed on him.

“She’s a damned soul!” Marcel insisted.

“So am I,” Christophe answered.

“I don’t believe that!” Marcel said, his voice breaking. “I don’t believe that anymore than I believe we’re all…we’re all indolent planters’ brats, whatever you called us! I don’t believe anything you say today. You should stop talking altogether!”

There was a flicker, a flinching in Christophe’s eyes. He took a slow drink of the whiskey. “You’re my star pupil, Marcel,” he said. “You’re the one face out there in the crowded class room that means the world.”

“Then don’t disappoint
me
, Chris!” Marcel said. “Not for Dolly Rose!”

Christophe winced. He sat still for a moment, and then with a soft sound more subtle than a sigh, he took the bottle of whiskey and locked it in the press. He rested his back against the press and looked calmly at Marcel.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said. His voice was low, devoid of irony. “And tomorrow and tomorrow…and tomorrow, I’ll be here.”

I
T WAS ONLY A FEW HOURS
later that Marcel entered the cottage parlor, dressed for the opera, his serge cape over his shoulders, his white gloves clasped in one hand. He had no spirit for it, and could not remember his passion for the music he had heard the year before. The image of Dolly Rose twirling her skirts in the empty classroom had commenced to obsess him for reasons that weren’t clear to him. And he was thinking only of his duty now to Marie. His aunts were fluttering about, assisting Lisette with all the boudoir preparations while Cecile sat collected by the fire.

But as he was sipping his brandy, and had just lit a cheroot by the
coals, he raised his eyes to see, quite unexpectedly, a woman he did not know emerging from the bedroom door. And it was with a flush of embarrassment that he realized this was his sister Marie. Forgetting himself entirely he rose in one fluid unconscious gesture from the chair.

Her black hair was brought up and back from her forehead to descend in deep waves on either side of her temples before being swept to the wreath of braids behind her head. Lisette had threaded these braids exquisitely with pearls, and pearls dangled as well from the pendants in the delicate lobes of her ears. The deep ruffle of her emerald green dress plunged to reveal for the first time the full swell of her breasts. And the skin was flawless there, set off by the iridescence of the watered silk, and it was as smooth and as fair as her naked arms. Marcel drew in his breath. She was a vision standing before him, in an excess of ornament that only a goddess might have supported, and as she lifted her eyes to him he saw that these were her real jewels. He was proud beyond words. And he felt such a rush of tender love for her that he realized he was brimming with tears. He forgot Dolly, forgot Christophe, forgot all the world. She reached out for him. He drew close to her as Lisette brought her velvet cape.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “let me kiss your hand.”

But it was not until they had settled in the box at the opera house and he saw the heads turn throughout the crowded tier that he began to feel a pounding excitement for her, an exultation when he looked at her, which he could not conceal. He could all but feel the eyes upon her, they seemed to give her cheeks a glow. And as she gazed for the first time on the spectacle around her, the commotion everywhere of painted fans and flashing jewels, and heads bowed beneath tiaras, she seemed to feel some genuine pleasure of her own. That old doleful aura had been dissipated. She was not that funereal angel that had always made him sad. In fact she was looking boldly across the dim gulf that divided the arms of the balcony to the Lermontant box.

At once the visits commenced. She had been the last to arrive, perhaps by some marvelous timing on the part of the aunts, and Marcel could see Celestina and Gabriella making small motions of greeting, and the Rousseau family, wife and daughters of the rich tailor, and the LeMonds with their cigar factories, and the colored planters who had come in from Iberville and St. Landry and Cane River were all settled comfortably in their chairs.

But behind him, Augustin Dumanoir had just entered to pay his respects with his father, that impressive, chocolate-colored man, his gaunt face and powerful African features rendered all the more dramatic by his silver hair. The young Augustin was the color of bronze. He wore a small ruby ring on the little finger of his right hand. And no
sooner had they withdrawn than Marcel had risen to greet the LeMond brothers, and then came young men from the Cane River with a note of introduction from Tante Josette. And here was Fantin Roget, clever enough to flatter Colette and Louisa enormously before turning ecstatic and simple eyes on Marie. His face as he bent to greet her was as fair, as white as her own.

But something had distracted Marcel. It was faintly disturbing, but he had to get back to it, and as soon as he could he looked out again across the house. It was a familiar figure in a far box, and there were other figures with it, one of them pathetically small, bent. It was Anna Bella, he realized, with Madame Elsie behind her stooped over her cane. And it was the slim, square-shouldered figure of Christophe that stood above her as she looked up. The endearing tilt of the head was unmistakable; she was laughing now without bothering to lift her fan, and even at this great remove, Marcel was overcome with a sense of her, of that sweetness, that slow, mellow voice that Christophe must be hearing now. Lightly, her white-gloved hand touched the sparkle of a pendant on her breast. And her breast was the color of ivory and flowed beautifully into the low bodice of apricot silk.

But the light was sputtering, going out. He could not tell if the distant face saw him as it turned, if the eyes were meeting his as Christophe withdrew. He saw the pale slope of rounded shoulders, that long graceful neck, the full bouffant of heavy black hair. And dropping his eyes, he peered at the distant glimmer of the musicians’ lights, and sighing, let the anticipation all around lull the fever in his veins. But there was pain in this. He did not feel enchantment. He could not lose himself, even as the music came at last, with a lovely surge, it was as if he could not care.

At each intermission, the admirers came. Marie was the sensation of the evening, and Marcel spent every minute clasping hands. Even Christophe came before the last act, reciting another little poem for Louisa which thrilled her so that she coquetted as Marcel hadn’t seen her do in years. The poem was straight from Lord Byron, and Christophe had a mocking smile. But Louisa had never heard of Lord Byron, and doubtless forgot the words as soon as they were recited. “Go visit with Juliet!” she struck Marcel’s shoulders with her fan. “Go on now,” she bent to whisper. “Your teacher’s mother hasn’t been here in ten years. And she so loved the opera, go on. I made her new dress.”

Richard had just lifted the green curtain and silently entered the box.

Marie shifted without the slightest coyness, “Eh
bien,”
she said under her breath. “I thought you had forgotten me, Richard.” And Marcel could see the blood rush to Richard’s face. He was radiant,
teasing her in return. “Ah Marie Ste. Marie, but we’ve met before, haven’t we?” He bent to kiss her hand without even lifting it. “Surely…or was it in my dreams?”

Marcel was on the verge of laughing. Sooner or later he had to start teasing Richard mercilessly about all this. Christophe, beside him as they moved down the carpeted corridor, said, “They are in love!”

“Then you see it, too!” Marcel said. But as Christophe lifted the curtain of his box, Marcel paused. It seemed no happiness tonight could be more than evanescent, he didn’t understand himself and this sudden apprehension, this sudden compulsion. “And why not?” he whispered defiantly, “Why not?”

“What is it, Blue Eyes?” Christophe whispered.

But how with that old witch right at Anna Bella’s side? And if we are not children, then what in hell are we, if I cannot call upon her between acts as it’s always done, if I cannot visit with her in her box? But he did not allow these thoughts to become confused. He turned, telling Christophe softly, urgently, he would be back.

Neither Anna Bella nor Madame Elsie saw him as he entered. And, as he drew close behind Anna Bella’s chair, the bell was sounded for the last act. Her head was slightly bowed, and those curling wisps that always escaped her coif lay on the fair nape of her neck. The old woman was stirring with the dry rustle of taffeta and some clicking noise from her throat.

“Aaah!” she let out that scornful sound as if for a vocal chord she had only her long hooked nose. And gently, just beneath him, Anna Bella looked up. Her breasts, so full, were actually plumped against the apricot silk and between them lay a deep well of shadow with the sparkle of the diamond, cold, against the flesh. But it was her bright face that obliterated this, the light gathered in the irises of her enormous eyes.

“Marcel,” she whispered, and the lights all around went dim. The old woman was speaking rapidly, viciously, she brought her cane down with a thump.

“Stop it, Madame Elsie!” came the insistent plea, the face the perfect shape of a sweetheart now rent with distress. She reached out for Madame Elsie’s cane. The stage lights had risen far below leaving them in a dusky cloud. Then without thinking Marcel lifted his fingers to his lips, placed a kiss on them and touched her baby-soft cheek. He heard her desperate whisper, “Marcel!” as he left the box.

The passage was dark. He was all but stumbling toward Christophe quite far ahead of him, and then into the loges, Christophe directing him to sit beside his mother as he took the other chair.

The music was all around him, the wild and tragic theme of the
closing act. He bowed his head. He saw nothing, and felt an immense suffocating lump in his throat. It was noise, deafening noise, this music. Painfully obliterating all else except the sensation that he was standing in the unlit hallway of the Mercier house and that Anna Bella was glaring at him from the wall, tears on her cheeks, and then came that right hand up toward his face. And what had this to do with the figure of Dolly Rose in lilac taffeta twirling through that classroom today as if she were a young girl? And what had this to do with the woman beside him, Juliet in black velvet, her gown so much a part of the dark that she was nothing but radiant flesh and otherwise naked, conceivably, an animalian posture nevertheless visible against that ornate little chair. He blinked at the distant stage, saw its colors running as if on a rain-drenched window pane. He could remember nothing of the sensation of Anna Bella’s hand against his face then and all of the sensation of having held her in his arms. All he had to do now to see Anna Bella was ever so slightly turn his head.

All he had to do to see beauty all around him was ever so slightly turn his head, Gabriella and Celestina, Nanette LeMond with her russet curls, and Dolly, Dolly whom he’d glimpsed before with those country quadroons done up in their Paris gowns, and Marie whose silhouette he could still see against the glow of the stage. Beauty was all around, beauty which seemed the very nature of his people in its infinite variety, splendid mixtures, that unabashed blend of the genteel and exotic that had made his women famous for two centuries and brought the aristocratic white blood again and again into their veins.

He sucked in his breath. This was unbearable to him, and he stared at the opera glasses in his hand. Juliet’s fingers had placed them there, and withdrawing stroked him lightly as they disappeared. The music sang of foreboding, tragedy, death. A Charlotte was being overcome by a Randolphe, while an Antonio wept in the wings.

And then one image imprinted itself clearly upon his eye. It was that of a white man, against the wall of a box below where women in front of him could not see him, looking up directly, unmistakably, at the colored tier. It seemed he lifted his glasses now to probe one certain spot. That box to the far left and down the length of the balcony where a girl with snow-white shoulders sat looking serenely at the stage. And Marcel, turning his glance to her, picked his sister out of the gloom. Dream on, Marcel thought suddenly, acidly, look while you can. She’s no immigrant off the boat from Saint-Domingue, no vain and vicious Dolly Rose. A gasp went up from the audience. Another Charlotte had met her inevitable violence, what had he said that night to Christophe when Christophe had only just come home? It was the death of innocence. He shook his head.

“But what is it?” Christophe whispered to him. The opera was
over. All around men rose to their feet. “Bravo, Bravo.” There was stomping on the hollow wooden floors.

There was a party afterwards at the aunts’ flat to which all were invited, the Lermontants with Giselle and her children, the Rogets, the Dumanoirs. Fiddlers had been hired and a spinet rented, Lendamain the caterer had rolled back the carpets for dancing, brought gallons of champagne.

Marcel realized at once that it was so crowded he could easily slip away, and Christophe did not surprise him by coming on alone.

“But where is that Juliet, I made her gown,” Tante Colette said to him, and he after a few polite excuses whispered to Marcel. “I can’t trust her at these affairs, you know how she is. She saw Dolly on the street a week ago and tried to catch her by the hair.”

Small wonder, Marcel thought. It seemed he should be loving all this, how exciting it would have been the year before when he’d gone home with all that music playing triumphantly in his brain. And now he could remember nothing of the opera, it had become a din.

“So she cannot be trusted at these affairs,” he thought irritably, and when Christophe spoke to him again he was almost rude.

At last, bad company for himself as well as anyone else, he went to take his leave of his aunts. The music had commenced, and Christophe had asked Marie to dance. They had just begun to move, gracefully, swiftly about the polished floor as Marcel headed for the stairs. Richard in the shadows, his arms folded, watched Marie, her skirts swaying with the waltz, his face serene with absorption, his lips just touched with a smile.